Nelson, Jacob, retired farmer – Portland – born on
Gotland, February 16, 1852. He traveled to the American West Coast in the fall
of 1871, where he started working on the construction of the Northern Pacific
railroad, followed by three years in the Puyallup-Valley in Washington State
where he participated in establishing a 19 acre hopps farm. After spending the
winter of 1875-76 in Silver Lake, he leased a farm in Freeport and earned a
couple of thousand dollars in six years. He had lent the $800 he had earned on
the work on the hopps farm in Puyallup, plus another $500, to the hopps farm’s
owner. When the hopps farmer went bankrupt, he paid off his debt to Mr. Nelson
with 40 acres of land in Tacoma. In 1882, he bought 320 acres along the Cowlitz
River, four miles south of Castle Rock, to settle down as a farmer. To pay off
the debt resulting from this purchase, he sold the 40 acres in Tacoma, in 1887,
for $4,000. If he had sold these 40 acres two or three years later, he could
have received ten times as much due to land appreciation! In 1889, he built a
large house on the farm property, steadily improving it and getting it in good
working order. In the years 1888 – 90 Mr. Nelson was County Commissioner. In the
spring of 1904 he leased the farm and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he owns
his own home at 819 Gantenbien Ave. Mr. Nelson has been married twice, first in
1875 to 1887, when his wife died, leaving one son and four daughters. Mr. Nelson
remarried in September 1889, to Carolina Enquist from Gotland.